Projects
Focused on
Cities & public space
Experience design
Connect & collab
Short info
Category
Prototype
Course
Creative Programming
Course co-ordinator
Jun Hu
Period
09-19 - 11-19
Here I tried to create 3D objects using an accelerometer (MPU6050) and Blender.
CityScapes
Description
Why
I used to play SimCity quite a lot back when I was in high school. Not only do I think the game is a lot of fun, but I believe that something similar could be a perfect tool for citizens, municipalities, and urban designers to experiment and discuss ideas for their cities. CityScapes is a possible approach to such a tool.
What
Due to my interest in tangibility and the mix between digital and physical, I decided to make a physical interface for digital cities. The prototype was a grid of 3x3 holders and a dozen of blocks with each their own corresponding building.
Processing, Arduino, Blender, and a teensy were used to make it.
Results
The prototype was well received, both by the course itself as my peer students. Amazingly, after having published the video and sharing it on Reddit, the video got picked up to 1200 views within days and two articles were written shortly after.
Learning points
The freedom of this course and how I resonated with its contents pushed me to make big steps in my technology and realization skills. This was the first project where I combined some of the programs that I had experimented with in high school.
The most impact of this course was how it opened my eyes to realize how much can be learned from simply trying things and failing at them, only to try again with new knowledge and ideas. A mindset that is very different from what I was taught in high school where failure is discouraged.